Many years ago, a revolutionary youth from my home state published an essay with the same title. He is the most celebrated revolutionary in India today. I know that Bhagat Singh was an atheist because he was influenced by Marxist and Leninist ideology. Now the question arises that why do I have to write this essay. I am neither a Marxist nor a Leninist and also my family background is extremely religious. My three previous generations have been associated with religion deeply and passionately. My father holds his PhD in Sikh religious Philosophy.

Why then do I write this essay and what made me turn into an atheist? I in turn ask you people why are you theists apart from the fact that you were born in religious families and theology has been drilled into your brains? Why is it that your religion and your views on God depend upon the family you are born into?

My atheism does not come from the predetermined notion that my family would be atheist or that I am immoral or vain. My friends would testify that I neither live in vanity nor immorality. My family is also religious as already stated above. I am an atheist because I don’t see any need of religion or God in my life and I feel that the concept of religion and God has outlived it’s utility. The institution of God was created when people saw different things happening around them and had no answer to why were they happening. So easiest way was to create an all powerful institution that was all powerful and was capable of doing anything and was unquestionable. In early civilization era, religion also served as a tool of state formation. The Monarchs till medieval times and in some places till modern times used religion to derive a devine right to rule over people with unlimited authority as questioning them would be equal to questioning God.

Now as we live in era of science, I don’t see any need of either religion or God. I have my own brain which works on logic that can easily differentiate between good or bad. And if you say that my intelligence is given to me by God then I have a simple question for you at the end of this. By your logic God should be more intelligent than humans as he makes intelligent beings. What is the source of his/her intelligence?

The student leader’s loud proclamation of new-found patriotism has nothing to do with a change of heart; it’s a change of tactic after sensing hostile public opinion and understanding the High Court’s mood

A few days in prison can miraculously change a person’s conduct. India’s rising star on the ideological and political firmament, the one and only Kanhaiya Kumar, is now singing a patriotic tune that should gladden Manoj Kumar’s heart. Out on bail for a period of six months after spending 20 days behind bars on a variety of charges including sedition, the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president’s fresh statements have been hailed as “amazing” and “brilliant” by his political admirers. On various platforms since his release, he claimed that his ideal was Rohith Vemula (why?) and not Afzal Guru; and that the azadi he is demanding is freedom from poverty, from hunger, from inequality.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar could not contain his excitement, claiming that “the coming forward of such a talented student and youth will strengthen the roots of democracy in our country”. He leaves unexplained how the roots of democracy can be strengthened when the likes of Kanhaiya Kumar remain mute to break-India campaigns. Mr Nitish Kumar’s colleague in the Janata Dal (United), Mr Sharad Yadav, was moved enough to declare that the country needed “more Kanhaiya Kumars so that the people could live and sleep peacefully”. Live and sleep peacefully, when university students and others plot the destruction of India! Not to be outdone, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal chipped in with his “amazing clarity of thought expressed wonderfully” endorsement, accompanied by a warning to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to not “mess with students”. In other words, the Prime Minister and the Government must remain silent spectators (like their predecessors) while sections of the student community go on a verbal rampage — not just against the incumbent regime but also institutions that symbolise democratic authority — Parliament, judiciary, police etc.

Just in case you thought all the gushes has to do with Kanhaiya Kumar’s patriotism, a correction is in order. The student leader is the toast of the Opposition especially because he used his homecoming to launch a tirade against the Prime Minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Patriotic sentiment doesn’t excite this crowd of opposition leaders; in fact, it embarrasses them. What has had the opposition leaders cheering like possessed fans at a rock concert is Kanhaiya’s diatribe against the Prime Minister. Two of the student activist’s gems are as follows: “Modiji only says mann ki baat but doesn’t listen to it”; and, “We have some people like that (selling magic) in our country, who say black money will come back; sabka saath sabka vikas”.

After all this, certain Left leaders have reportedly decided to use him for electoral campaigning. Kanhaiya Kumar claims he is not into politics. We will soon know. He has shown the veteran politician’s knack of milking situations. Meanwhile, he is being felicitated as if he has been discharged of all allegations, and in a manner reminiscent of the adoration freedom-fighters received from the public on their release from colonial prisons.

Kanhaiya Kumar has no option but to adhere to the undertaking he has given to the Delhi High Court, that he will not participate actively or passively in any activity that may be termed as anti-national. On his part, the student leader maintains he is not anti-national. The irony appears lost on his admirers. Why would the court ordinarily ask a law-abiding citizen to provide an undertaking that he will not engage in anti-India actions, as part of the bail proceeding? It would do so only if it has reason to believe that the person concerned may do what the court considers wrong. The judge had even gone to the extent of quoting a patriotic song from a Manoj Kumar film and observing that anti-nationalism was an “infection” that had to be addressed.

Kanhaiya Kumar has discovered the virtue of patriotism after his time in jail. He had not found it necessary to condemn and confront the anti-India and pro-terrorist sloganeering crowd in the JNU campus in the second week of last month. If he had wanted, he, together with the other students of the university, could have easily done that. He didn’t, just as he had not opposed the ‘cultural meeting’ that was organised with the deliberate aim of demeaning the country and its sovereignty and integrity, and in which calls for India’s disintegration were raised.

Kanhaiya Kumar today talks grandly of the difference between “deshdroh” (anti-nation) and “rajdroh” (anti-Government), but since he remained silent (even complicit, according to his detractors and Delhi Police) over calls for India’s dismemberment and terrorist Afzal Guru’s ‘martyrdom’, he must educate us on whether that silence had to do with deshdroh orrajdroh.

Incidentally, Kanhaiya Kumar’s (after-thought) sanitisedazadi call is interesting, since he now wants freedom ‘within’ India and not ‘from’ India — and from a host of socio-economic ills. The student leader is now craftily projecting for himself an image of an activist out to provide succor to the toiling millions struggling for two meals a days or decent clothing. If he is sincere, he should train his guns on the Congress which ruled the country the longest and ruined it the most. He must turn around and demand that his comrades explain why they ground West Bengal’s economic development to dust in the more than three decades of uninterrupted reign. If he is a progressive, he must seek answers from both the Congress and the Left parties on why they have continued resorting to brazen appeasement policies based on religious identity (even as they condemn the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh for precisely that) and not on economic considerations.

On matters of ideology, he and his ilk have the memory of Gujarat 2002; how is it that they have forgotten the 1984 Sikh massacre, or the various acts of violence involving the Left cadre in Kerala and West Bengal over decades?

Kanhaiya Kumar may want to reflect on the observation by legendary businessman and builder of the iconic McDonald’s, Raymond Albert ‘Ray’ Kroc: “The quality of leaders is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.” The JNU scholar might not be Kroc’s ideological fellow-traveller, but as a student leader (and a soon-to-be political leader), he can ponder over Kroc’s observation without being infected by the ‘capitalist’ virus. Did he set the right standard by his silence over anti-India campaigns? Reports suggest that he had even opposed the cancellation of permission by university authorities to the so-called cultural event.

Kanhaiya Kumar’s loud proclamation of patriotism has nothing to do with a change of heart; it’s a change of tactic after sensing hostile public opinion and the High Court’s mood.

Organisations are born in different circumstances and go on to become something else. The best example is that of the Congress, which was essentially a social organisation in the beginning but after the Independence transformed into a political party and is today a family enterprise of Sonia Gandhi and her children. Ordinary Indians cannot hope to rise in this party by the independent dignity of merit. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) began in a unique historical circumstance and has emerged as an advocate for the ideals of the Indian Constitution.

In September, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat suggested that an apolitical committee be formed to review the reservation policy so that its benefits could reach the neediest of the Indians irrespective of their caste and religious identity. Bhagwat asked the government to “form a committee of people genuinely concerned for the interest of the whole nation and committed for social equality…; [the committee] should decide which categories [of Indian citizens] require reservation and for how long.” Currently, India’s quota system is based on caste, which continually engenders divisive politics that divides Indians on caste and religious lines, with Muslims demanding quota based on one’s faith in Islam. It also denies welfare benefits to the poorest Indians from the upper castes and therefore is violative of the Constitution’s Article 14 on the Right to Equality.

Bhagwat’s constitutional idea was meant to resolve a corrosive problem in India’s politics. It was compatible with the Indian Constitution’s original idea that quotas, as a measure to end social backwardness, should be for a short-term period. “If we would have implemented this policy as envisaged by the Constitution makers instead of doing politics over it, then present [divisive] situation would not have arrived,” Bhagwat said. However, his wholly constitutional suggestion disappeared from the nation’s political debate. Both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP – for the fear of losing votes) and India’s counterfeit intellectuals (for the reason of liberal-leftist ideology) did not deem it fit to write op-eds, or organise seminars and debates on television channels.

In purely secular terms, there should be no objection to Bhagwat’s suggestion to review the quota policy so that its benefits reach all Indians from underprivileged sections irrespective of their caste and religion. But in India’s national discourse, secularism – as practised in India – has come to mean appeasement of Islam and Pakistan, and is therefore rightly being dubbed by its critics as sickularism. India’s counterfeit sickularist intelligentsia (journalists, actors and authors), which controls the nation’s narrative, rejects good ideas because they originate from the RSS. As a result, India is witnessing the emergence of a Constitutional Right led by the BJP and its mother organisation the RSS, while the Congress is being pushed into the arms of the ideological Left.

At the India Ideas Conference in Goa, on 17 November, Tufail Ahmed, director of South Asia Studies Project at the Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington DC, suggested that to overcome the divisive politics originating from the quota system, the Indian government could evolve a Comprehensive National Policy on BPL families (i.e. those holding “below poverty level” cards), giving their children up to the age of 18 free books, free clothes and free education. This objective can be achieved by diverting all subsidies and, for an example, shutting down the Air India which is a humungous burden on our poor children. Once all BPL families, irrespective of their caste and religious affiliation, receive these benefits, the need for quota politics will become redundant in people’s eyes and will free politicians from the practice of divisive politics. There can certainly be other ideas to steer the country out of the divisive politics emanating from the quota system.

Shiv Sena, which is from the Hindu family of political parties but unrelated to the RSS, has endorsed Bhagwat’s idea. It has also said that the government must replace religious books by the Constitution for people to take oath in courts so that the Indian polity can be pulled out of the religion-based politics. On November 30, in an editorial in its newspaperSaamna, Shiv Sena observed: “Let people swear by the Constitution in courts instead of religious holy books.” It added: “The Constitution should be the sacred book for (people of) all religions. All religions are equal before law.” Such purely secular ideas are being currently rejected by India’s dominant liberal-left sickularist intelligentsia.

It is true that some Hindu groups have threatened book launches and have dug up cricket pitches especially with regard to Pakistani writers and cricketers, but it cannot be argued that they will not abide by the Indian Constitution. In fact, it is their angst not against Pakistanis visiting India but against India’s liberal-sickularist intellectuals that often results in such incidents. It must not be forgotten that in Gujarat, Modi, despite a solid background in the RSS, demolished scores of temples to widen roads despite opposition from the Hindu groups aligned with the BJP and RSS, notably the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. It is difficult to imagine if a Muslim politician emerging from the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind can even think of removing mosques and shrines situated by the roadsides to somewhere else.

At this point in time, the BJP is better placed in the nation’s polity because it is on the side of both history (which teaches us who we are) and the Constitution (which teaches us who we want to become). While the Congress promotes dynastic politics, the BJP furthers the constitutional ideals. It is not incidental then that it is not from the Congress but from the RSS’s womb that a new constitutional species of Indians – represented by Narendra Modi, the former tea-seller who is now our prime minister – emerged last year. After the victory in the 2014 parliamentary elections, Modi – the former RSS regional organiser – walked up in Delhi on 20 May, knelt down in prayer with folded hands and touched his forehead to the footsteps of the Indian parliament, an institution created by the Constitution and essentially not a religious place of worship.

Not many people can grasp the symbolism of Modi, the RSS man, bowing before the footsteps of the Indian parliament. Indians have always bowed before temples, not before institutions created by reason. Modi has lived his adult life in the RSS and it is entirely predictable that he has emerged as the upholder of the Indian Constitution. Modi told his biographer Andy Marino: “the democratic values that I found” during the anti-Emergency struggle became “a part of my DNA.” “I became aware; I understood the Constitution, I understood the rights, because before that I was living in a different world. The Emergency became a university for me,” Modi explained.

Indian writers who paint Modi in sectarian terms should read his speech on the role of constitutions in human life delivered before the parliament of Nepal last year. He was not preaching Hinduism to the Nepalese. Addressing Nepal’s parliament, Modi declared: “The constitution is not a book, it connects yesterday, today and tomorrow.” Earlier sages authored Vedas and Upanishads, he said, observing: “In the same series, in modern life, a nation’s constitution is born as a new scripture.” Before the 2014 elections, Modi told the BJP National Council Meet in New Delhi that the Indian Constitution is “a cherished heritage” and observed: “We can look in the eye of the world because we are a democracy… We are proud that we follow the tradition of a republic.”

While village republics existed in ancient India, the Constitution’s democratic ideals about equality and liberty of individuals arrived in modern India via the British colonial rule. Originating from the Greek philosophy, the movement of democratic ideas known as European Enlightenment flowered into the American and the French revolutions. “We the people”, the opening words of the Indian Constitution, are borrowed from the U.S. Constitution which begins with the words: “We the people of the United States.” In the contemporary times, Modi is the European Enlightenment’s best representative in India. It is not surprising that on vital issues of modern times, notably on the issue of Muslim women’s rights to quality and individual liberty, it is the Constitutional Right led by the RSS and BJP that stands in tune with the ideals of the European Enlightenment while the Left-of-the-Centre parties led by the Congress are silent and ideologically lost. Even Liberal-leftist-sickular writers and journalists are totally silent, or wayward and diffident, on social media networks with regard to jihadism, Islamism and burqa.

Individual liberty and human rights are no longer the forte of the Leftist intellectuals mugged by ideology. The current state of the Indian mind is such that if you tweet in favour of ending Triple Talaq and other Islamic legal archaisms affecting the liberty of Muslim women, it is the RSS and BJP followers who rise to become the first line of defence for Muslim women’s rights. Regarding the advocacy of the Uniform Civil Code, an objective set in the Constitution to give equal rights to members of all religions, it is the RSS and BJP which are at the forefront. As the Constitution’s tenets take deeper roots in the Indian society, it appears that Hindu groups, which have been wrong on multiple counts in the past, are shedding their sectarianisms and are imbibing the constitutional norms and values in their outlook.

Even on the question of eating beef, it is not the BJP or RSS that made laws against cow slaughter in different states. It was essentially the Congress that enacted such laws because this is what the Constitution requires regarding the protection of cows. In fact, in the BJP-ruled Goa, you could openly and legally eat beef. If the law allows you to eat beef in an Indian state, you are free to eat beef. If the law in a certain state doesn’t allow you to do so, you cannot slaughter a cow. This constitutional principle, differing from state to state, is entirely compatible with the diverse culture of India. So, what is the RSS’s cultural agenda for which it is being scorned by liberal intellectuals? This question was answered by RSS leader Dattatreya Hosabale in great detail at the India Ideas Conference where he argued that the RSS has no cultural agenda for the nation, and that the Indian culture that has existed for centuries is itself the agenda of the RSS.

Delhi Government has come up with an innovative idea to curb pollution in the city. Allowing vehicles with odd numbers and even numbers on alternate days. Some people see this as a radical step and are hailing it. I can do nothing but pity the intelligence of such people. There are multiple points where this policy is bound to fail. I hope the Government is ready

Circumventions- People will surely try to circumvent to law and buy a cheap low quality car with alternative number plate to drive every day. This proves to be more deadly than present circumstances. Lucy Saddler who run a Low emissions Zone Website in Europe says that drivers inevitably circumvent restrictions by buying cheap, inefficient cars with opposing number plates. This means this scheme has had an adverse effect on air quality in the long run.So people will circumvent the law and create a bigger problem than the one in hand.
Another provision of the law is that cars from other state are out of the ambit of the law. This is where its designed to shift blame. People will start getting their cars registered from UP or Haryana and drive in Delhi. Then AAP will say other state commuters are responsible. We are not responsible. Classic Kejriwal politics.

Public transport is not that good- From my 4 month stay in Delhi, one thing that I have come to know is that the public transport is not good enough to bear the burden. DTC is overcrowded and not frequent enough, and Metro is not everywhere.Also the problem with metro is that is you want to go from Maharani Bagh to Noida, you first need to go to Govindpuri and from there all the way to Noida via Mayur Vihar. It takes double the time you would take in a private vehicle. So again its flawed.

Late Night Problems- There is no public transportation in Delhi after 12 am. So for late nighters and for students who work part time or stay back in their institutes for some reason will have to rely on Cabs. Now not everyone can afford cabs everyday. And also if someone has a night shift so which number would he fall in? Going to office on an odd day and coming back on even day. At around 3 or 4 when night shifts get over there is no public transportation. So again Cab every day.

Analyzing it, we see this policy has too many flaws. Will this work? Hope it does. But my gut feeling says it won’t. Lets see what time has in its folds.

If India Were An Animal Farm, It Has Been Encroached By A Class Of One-Eyed Animals, Who Are Better Educated… Live In Comfortable Homes, Drink Bottled Water, And Infest Our Television Studios”

“If India were an animal farm, it has been encroached by a class of one-eyed animals, who are better educated and have given themselves awards, live in comfortable homes, drink bottled water, and infest our television studios and Sahitya Akademi [India’s National Academy of Letters]. Celebrated as intellectuals, this class of one-eyed animals, with feet deep in the dynasty that ruled for the maximum period since Independence, has long tails which wiggle in the direction of the well from where honey once flowed.

“The one-eyed species, journalists and politicians included, sees the killing of a Muslim man in Dadri by extremist Hindus, but by habit goes to pretend-slumber when Professor T.J. Joseph’s hand is chopped off by Islamic terrorists in Kerala.

“Baba Ramdev, the yoga guru, can at least claim that he tried to avoid an ink attacker. But the one-eyed intellectual understands the inner workings of media industries. Sudheendra Kulkarni, for example, calmly allows Shiv Sena members to blacken his face, more thoroughly the better, waits for television crews and proceeds to host former Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri in Mumbai. This intellectual will not release Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai’s book in her birthplace, Swat. He knows where to host book events, and, importantly, where not to host them. Backed by paid media, this one-eyed species collides against the unpaid social media and elected representatives.

“In Bihari writer George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the pigs that rule over all other animals are clever and educated, and are guarded by carefully raised dogs, or journalists in modern times. Journalists bark on Twitter, authors return awards; and the Congress party is defended, not by its own leaders. Also in Orwell’s novel, dogs help cause a political coup for the pigs. A one-eyed journalist elected Haryana chief minister M. L. Khattar to seek his views on beef; she could have chosen the more suave Arun Jaitley, or gone to any village to seek views on beef.”

Journalists Use The Truth “As An Inflammable Weapon To Effect A Political Coup… Inserting Words Into Mouths Is A Journalistic Talent”

“As per a Pew forecast, India will have the largest Muslim population by 2050. Since the cuddly cow is grammared into Indian civilization, beef riots are easy to stoke and to roast our politics, or human lives. We naively believe that journalists seek truth. The case is otherwise: Journalists know the truth and use it as an inflammable weapon to effect a political coup.

“In India, beef has been an issue for centuries, notably when Mughal emperor Akbar banned cow slaughter. Khattar’s interview was headlined by the editor as: ‘Muslims can live in this country but they will have to give up eating beef, says Haryana CM.’ Without mentioning Pakistan, the editor conveyed this message: Muslims should leave for Pakistan if they do not give up eating beef. Inserting words into mouths is a journalistic talent. The actual interview was published in actual context the next day, after the editor’s tongue tasted blood. Truth does not prevail; what prevails is the truth.”

“The One-Eyed Intellectual Who Shouts On The Killings Of Muslims Routinely Stitches His Lips When It Comes To The Murders Of Hindu Activists”

“In Kerala, the communists who organize beef[-eating] festivals are the moral cowards of our times, and will not organize a pork-eating festival in Kozhikode and Malappuram, or in front of Delhi’s Jama Masjid. The one-eyed intellectual who shouts on the killings of Muslims routinely stitches his lips when it comes to the murders of Hindu activists in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

“Journalists and socialites who stoke beef riots will not draw a cartoon of Prophet Muhammad, not even from their kitchen. Secular editors usually do not write or tweet for Muslim women’s rights. But if Hindus tweet for Muslim women’s equality, they are dubbed by secularists as Sanghis. In the West, such truth-speakers are dubbed as Zionists.

“Thanks to the one-eyed rulers, Indian secularism is half-Islamist and half-Pakistani. Akhilesh Yadav, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, hosted Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali in Lucknow after his show was cancelled due to the Shiv Sena’s threat. Arvind Kejriwal, the secular chief minister, invited Ali to Delhi. Kejriwal and Yadav did not invite our Oscar-winning musician A. R. Rehman after his show in Delhi was cancelled due to a Barelvi cleric’s fatwa.”

The Intellectual’s “Cowardice Is His Weapon,” Masked As Morality, As He “Hatch[es] A Media-Created Political Plot Against [Prime Minister] Narendra Modi”

“Indian secularism loves Pakistanis, not Indian Muslims. Mamata Banerjee lauds Ali, vomits silence on Taslima Nasreen, the Bangladeshi writer. Indian secularism is truly Pakistani, not even a quarter-Bangladeshi. The one-eyed intellectual nurtures his type. Khushwant Singh, who defended Emergency, was loved and celebrated. He sides with Islamists who attacked T. J. Joseph, or gets The Satanic Versesbanned. He is comfortable with criminals.

“Vikram Seth, the novelist, was morally comfortable to receive an award from an accused in the 1984 genocide of Sikhs. The one-eyed coward hiding behind literary work finds every newspaper and television channel to air his views, but accuses our nation of lacking freedom of speech. Salman Rushdie, who was prevented by the secularist-Islamist goons from speaking in Jaipur, walks into the embrace of the one-eyed species, the ruling seculariate.

“A newspaper reported that Panchjanya, a magazine close to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, justified killings for slaughtering cows. The same newspaper shuts its eye to the justifications of hate against non-Muslims, or killings of apostates in the Koran and Hadiths (traditions of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad). The Mumbai-based newspaper Roznama Urdu Times, in an article on December 26, cited the Koran and Hadiths to justify that Muslims converting to Hinduism be murdered. It wrote: ‘The first interpreter of the Koran, Prophet Muhammad, has clearly ordered the killing of a person becoming apostate.’ If Panchjanya be banned, what about the Koran?

“Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, said: ‘All men are intellectuals, but not all men have… the function of intellectuals.’ In the Gramscian sense, voters (and Twitter ‘trolls’ who fight for truth) are intellectuals who shape politics. In the 2014 elections, this class of two-eyed species filled up the creative deficit in the nation’s politics which the one-eyed animals had created.

“Consequently, a tea-seller became the prime minister, whose mission is to build toilets, clean streets, and create jobs. The one-eyed intellectual is now unhappy. Masked as morality, his cowardice is his weapon; it is hatching a media-created political plot against Narendra Modi, the elected farmer on the farm.”

Wahhabism or Wahhabi mission is a religious movement or branch of Sunni Islam.It has been variously described as “orthodox”, “ultraconservative”,”austere”, “fundamentalist”, “puritanical”(or “puritan”) and as an Islamic “reform movement” to restore “pure monotheistic worship” (tawhid) by scholars and advocates,and as an “extremist pseudo-Sunni movement” by opponents. Adherents often object to the term Wahhabi or Wahhabism as derogatory, and prefer to be called Salafi or muwahhid.

Wahhabism is named after an eighteenth-century preacher and scholar,Muhammad ibn Abdal-Wahhab (1703–1792). He started a revivalist movement in the remote, sparsely populated region of Najd,advocating a purging of practices such as the popular “cult of saints”, and shrines and tomb visitation, widespread among Muslims, but which he considered idolatry (Shirk), impurities and innovations inIslam (Bid’ah). Eventually he formed a pact with a local leader Muhammad bin Saud offering political obedience and promising that protection and propagation of the Wahhabi movement would mean “power and glory” and rule of “lands and men.”The movement is centered on the principle of Tawhid,or the “uniqueness” and “unity” of God.The movement also draws from the teachings of medieval theologian IbnTaymiyyah and early jurist Ahmad ibn Hanabal

The alliance between followers of ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Muhammad bin Saud’s successors (the House of Saud) proved to be a rather durable alliance. The house of bin Saud continued to maintain its politico-religious alliance with the Wahhabi sect through the waxing and waning of its own political fortunes over the next 150 years, through to its eventual proclamation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, and then afterwards, on into modern times. Today Mohammed bin Abd Al-Wahhab’s teachings are state-sponsored and are the official form of Sunni Islam in 21st century Saudi Arabia.

Estimates of the number of adherents to Wahhabism vary, with one source (Michael Izady) giving a figure of fewer than 5 million Wahhabis in the Persian Gulf region (compared to 28.5 million Sunnis and 89 million Shia).

With the help of funding from Petroleum exports (and other factors), the movement underwent “explosive growth” beginning in the 1970s and now has worldwide influence.

Wahhabism has been accused of being “a source of global terrorism”,inspiring the ideology of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria(ISIS) and for causing disunity in Muslim communities by labeling Muslims who disagreed with the Wahhabi definition of monotheism as apostates (takfir), thus paving the way for their execution for apostasy. It has also been criticized for the destruction of historic mazaars and other Muslim and non-Muslim buildings and artifacts.The “boundaries” of what make up Wahhabism have been called “difficult to pinpoint”, but in contemporary usage, the terms Wahhabiand Salafi are often used interchangeably, and considered to be movements with different roots that have merged since the 1960s. But Wahhabism has also been called “a particular orientation within Salafism”,or an ultra-conservative, Saudi brand of Salafism.